Mitchell Krebs
Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead
Thanks, Courtney, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining our call. We reported very strong financial and operating results yesterday. I’d say the most gratifying quarterly results in the five years that I’ve been CEO of this company. Our performance reflects the progress we’ve made in revamping the company, its operations and its culture to position Coeur for long-term success. The second quarter is a testament to the hard work and solid execution by our employees of the strategic plans we laid out three years ago. They also provide even further evidence of our ability to consistently deliver on our commitments. While we still have more work to do in executing our strategy, I’m certainly pleased to see our production growing, our costs both operating and non-operating continue to drop, declining debt levels and our earnings now turning positive. And I’m particularly pleased to see our free cash flow shift to positives sooner than anticipated. The rise in silver and gold prices since the beginning of the year has provided a strong tailwind for the entire industry, but our steadily improving cost performance and solid execution quarter-in and quarter-out are really starting to set us apart. A major milestone was achieved during the second quarter when we received the record of decision from the BLM allowing us to begin the next leach pad expansion at Rochester, which we expect to be completed by this time next year and will further extend the mine life. We’re also extremely pleased to have now satisfied the obligations of the old gold royalty agreement held by Franco-Nevada on Palmarejo as of July 26. Beginning in August, we are shifting to the more favorable terms under the renegotiated gold stream agreement which should have a significant positive impact on the company’s cash flow going forward. Just a few highlights I’d like to point out before opening up the call to questions. On the production front, overall production levels were up strongly 19% higher compared to the first quarter. Palmarejo silver equivalent production rose 34% due to higher grades and more tons coming from underground mining out of Guadalupe and a small amount from Independencia. Slight 10 in the presentation materials illustrates these trends over the past few quarters as we’ve successfully transitioned Palmarejo to a 100% underground mining. Rochester silver equivalent production increased 31% due to higher mining rates mostly and Wharf’s production was up 34% over the first quarter, thanks primarily to the fresh ounces that were loaded on the pad 2 earlier in the year. In terms of cost, our overall cost per ounce was down by double digit yet again, and that’s on the heels of strong cost reductions in our first quarter as well. Slide six and seven do a good job of showing these consistent reductions and trends that now stretch back over the past three years. The biggest drop in the second quarter was Palmarejo where adjusted cost applicable to sales were down 19% to $8.24 for silver equivalent ounce; at Rochester where they were down 8% to $10.43 an ounce and Wharf where they were down 20% to $534 per gold equivalent ounce. Our G&A which has come down by about 45% over the last couple of years was down 11% quarter-over-quarter and 13% year-over-year. In terms of financial highlights, obviously we are proud to report positive quarterly earnings. Net income in the quarter was $14.5 million and adjusted earnings were $17.3 million. Adjusted EBITDA nearly doubled from $36.8 million in the first quarter to $72.4 million in the second quarter. And on a trailing 12 month basis, adjusted EBITDA stood at $171 million. Free cash flow defined as operating cash flow less CapEx, less payments to Franco-Nevada was $12.2 million during the quarter and is expected to decline throughout the remainder of the year. We’ve been pointing deposited expected free cash flow in the second half of 2016 so it’s great to accomplish that a quarter or two earlier than planned. On the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with cash of $258 million and then subsequent to the end of the quarter, we paid off the $100 million term loan which reduced our total debt to nearly 20% and annual interest expense by about $9 million, and brings considerably more flexibility to our balance sheet. Taking this repayment into account, our total debt to adjusted EBITDA now stands at 2.5 times versus 5.9 times just a year ago. Slide eight illustrates these trends of lower debt, rise in EBITDA and a rapid decline in our leverage statistics over the past several quarters. Lastly, just a couple of comments on the impact of our recent acquisitions, as you know, we were more active than most over the past couple of years and those additions are now paying off handsomely. The Wharf mine which we acquired for just under $100 million about 17 months ago has already returned nearly 60% of the acquisition cost and free cash flow and is on track for a fantastic year. Slide 15 shows what our team has been able to do at Wharf in terms of mining rates, costs and cash flow since closing that acquisition early last year. And then at the Independencia underground deposit at Palmarejo, which we consolidated through the acquisition of Paramount gold and silver a little over a year ago, we’re well in our way to achieving a mining rate of 1,000 tons per day by year end this year, which will then become a second major source of high grade ore along with Guadalupe and help lead to what should be a huge 2017 at Palmarejo. As we look forward to the second half of the year, we’re well on track to deliver our full year production and cost guidance. Our year-to-date costs are running below our full year guidance ranges, assuming these trends continue in the third quarter, we’ll need to take a look at revising downward our cost guidance which would be great, but we’ll leave it alone for now and see how the next three month goes. We do plan to increase our exploration spending during the second half of the year by about $8 million, a little less than half of this amount will be expensed exploration to try and add new resources at Kensington and Palmarejo in high probability areas. It will also fund some earlier stage exploration programs on properties in Nevada and Mexico that make up a part of our longer term pipeline that we have assembled over the past couple of years. The remainder of that $8 million of additional exploration spending will be capitalized and will focus on accelerating the conversion of existing high quality resources to reserves at Palmarejo, Rochester and Kensington. We also plan to bump up our capital expenditure level during the second half of the year by about – an additional $10 million. About half of that amount will be used to accelerate the work on the stage IV leach pad expansion at Rochester now that all the permits are in hand. We expect the total cost of that expansion to be somewhere between $40 million and $45 million, the majority of which will be spent next year in 2017. The other half of that $10 million additional CapEx expenditure in the second half will be used to create another portal into Guadalupe from the south along with funding the ongoing development work at Jualin at Kensington. As pleased as we are about the second quarter and the year so far, we really do consider this to be just the beginning. We’ve invested about $60 million at Rochester over the past two years to achieve the higher mining rates and greater efficiencies we’re only now starting to see. We’re investing over $40 million at Palmarejo to transition to higher grade, higher margin underground mining as you could see in the most recent quarter. Slide 9 and 10 in our presentation materials do a good job of illustrating this significance of this transition. But the full impact of these investments at Palmarejo really should start to be seen next year when Independencia starts to ramp up above 1,000 tons per day. In the meantime, our drilling result at both Guadalupe and Independencia make us feel very optimistic about the long-term potential of Palmarejo. We’re also investing about $40 million at Kensington to drill and develop significantly higher grade gold ounces there. But that’s not expected to start impacting Kensington’s production, cost and cash flow until late next year. Even without that future expected benefits of the higher grade ore, our team has been able to bring down Kensington’s cost by nearly half. In 2012, cost per ounce there were over $1,300 an ounce versus $740 an ounce in the most recent quarter. In terms of just getting started, 2016 is the first full year of having worst low cost production and free cash flow in the portfolio which is making a big difference. Even our strategy we began implementing late last year at San Bartolome to purchase higher grade ore is only now starting to have the intended benefit. If you look at slide 16, you can see exactly when we implemented this approach when cost dropped down by about $2 an ounce. As a result, San Bartolome generated $15 million of free cash flow in the first half of this year. When stakeholders ask, what’s next for Coeur after seeing how far we’ve come over the past couple of years? There is no shortage of initiatives to point to that are high returns, high impact and well advanced. I know I speak for everyone here when I say that we are pleased with our second quarter results and that we remain focused on delivering the many components of our strategy that still lie ahead of us. That’s the extent of our prepared comments. Let’s go ahead then and open it up for any questions.